Central Ohio’s Housing Moment: Challenges and Opportunities
This blog was originally featured in The Columbus Foundation's LinkedIn newsletter, Meeting the Moment. The newsletter explores the dynamic changes in our region, what those changes mean for our community and its residents, and the importance of coming together to address the opportunities and challenges ahead.
In March, The Columbus Foundation announced the 5 Nonprofits to Watch in 2024, a group of exemplary and dynamic nonprofits working to strengthen and improve the community. Among these organizations is the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio (AHACO). Founded in 2015, AHACO uses data, research, education, and advocacy to help close central Ohio’s housing gaps. Guided by the expertise and experience of the organization’s members, AHACO engages with government, businesses, policy leaders, and community organizations to advocate for and unlock housing solutions.
In a recent Q&A, Carlie J. Boos, Esq., Executive Director of AHACO, shared her insights on central Ohio’s housing opportunities and challenges, as well as the collaborative role AHACO plays to help close our region’s housing gaps.
Carlie J. Boos, Esq., Executive Director of the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio (Challen Brown/The Columbus Foundation).
Your professional journey includes significant roles in legal aid and with the Ohio Housing Finance Agency. How have these experiences shaped your leadership approach, particularly during this critical time for our region?
Housing can be a very specialized profession—whether it’s law, finance, or policymaking. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to learn all these disciplines. The Affordable Housing Alliance feels a bit like a capstone course, where I get to blend all these experiences together.
There are two big themes that influence how I approach the housing challenge that central Ohio now faces. First is that we can only succeed if we collaborate. The old saying “we go further together” has never failed me. The Alliance begins all our work by listening directly to the people who are affected, whether it’s renters facing eviction or aspiring homeowners who are struggling to buy. By truly and deeply understanding their experiences, we can then team up with experts who are able to build uniquely tailored solutions.
The second major lesson I’ve learned is that we are capable of doing really hard things. In my lifetime, we’ve overcome a pandemic, beat back a recession, and digitized our lives. And the world my parents were born into bears little resemblance to the one we walk through today, with civil rights, disability rights, and women’s rights all taking monumental leaps forward. So, yes, housing is a huge problem, but it’s a problem that we can solve.
How does AHACO work with its member organizations to close our region’s housing gaps?
It’s important to understand that our members work for the community. We’re a team of 40 affordable housing experts, and the primary qualification to join the Alliance is that you wake up every day and work to put yourself out of business. Our goal is to make affordable housing so ubiquitous that we’re unnecessary.
Our members are some of the most respected, intellectual, and driven housing experts in the world. But we come at this problem from different perspectives and lived experiences. By sharing a table, we challenge each other to think differently about this problem, and push ourselves to find consensus. Whether the Alliance is advocating for more investments in the affordable housing infrastructure, more resources for emergency services, or new laws to protect residents, we speak with one voice.
What do you believe are the most promising tools or programs currently available in our region to address affordable housing? How can they be leveraged to make a greater impact?
We have two distinct but related housing problems in central Ohio. First, we don’t have enough homes. As a result, we all end up competing against each other for fewer and fewer homes, driving prices higher and higher. This is why we see so many working families, people with good jobs, who are still struggling to get ahead.
That scarcity isn’t natural—it’s manufactured by zoning laws and public policies that were built to meet the needs of yesterday, not today. The City of Columbus’ Zone In initiative pulls our land use laws into the 21st century and is a smart approach, especially because it was driven by community input. This won’t just help us build more homes; it will make those homes more responsive to today’s residents by being more connected to transit, jobs, and culture.
However, zoning reform isn’t enough to fix this problem. Our second housing challenge is that we need to scale up our existing programs and create new ones. Getting ahead of this problem requires robust funding, just like we invest in other essentials like job creation, technology, and healthcare.
Locally, the Franklin County Magnet Fund and Columbus’ Affordable Housing Bond programs are great innovations that we can absolutely build upon. Similarly, the Resiliency Bridge and Success Bridge programs are amazing—built locally and renowned nationally—and use stable housing as a platform for economic growth so people can grow out of poverty.
Can you describe a couple of the strategies AHACO is employing to maximize the region's housing capacity?
I have to lift up the work of CONVERGENCE Columbus, a coalition working to close Black and minority homeownership gaps. In the last few months, this team launched the Maude Hill Growing Homeownership Fund and the Rise Up fund, two major initiatives to expand access to down payment grants. They also built Bloom614.org, an impressive online platform that connects aspiring homeowners to tools, grants, and education to supercharge their journey.
We’re also proud to have played a part in creating the Resiliency Bridge and Success Bridge programs, which combine time-limited housing supports with college and career education credentials to help people pull themselves out of poverty. We’re seeing so many people enter these programs struggling—they’re behind on rent, or they’re worried about how to get by each month. By the end of the program, they’ve got a degree, a great job, and more pride and confidence than they ever thought possible. We’ve graduated over a hundred students so far, but there’s so many more who just need a fair shot at an education. These programs are collaborations between Home for Families, Columbus State Community College, and Ohio Means Jobs, which are just a pleasure to partner with!
Are there any recent studies or data on housing affordability that have particularly stood out to you?
One of the most interesting trends I’ve been watching is the rise of polling data on housing matters. We’re used to seeing this kind of public sentiment tracking in political campaigns, but it’s crossing over into socioeconomic issues in a really dynamic way that lets us better under what Americans’ housing priorities are.
There was a recent survey from the Pew Charitable Trusts that found overwhelming public support for affordable housing initiatives, especially at the local level. A separate poll shows that 78 percent of Americans think that housing should either be the top priority or an important priority for Congress.
This overwhelming support for action isn’t surprising when you see the research showing how extensive the housing pressure is. In the last year, one in six Americans fell behind on their rent or mortgage. A third of us saw our housing costs go up; half saw our property taxes rise. More and more people are worried about what their housing future looks like and, even those of us who feel stable, are worried about the next generation.
This is a fixable problem, and the people are mobilized for action.
Can you summarize the key findings from AHACO’s “Finding Home in the Heart of it All” report?
So often, we talk about housing as this bleak doomsday scenario where everything is bad and getting worse. Finding Home is the exact opposite. It was a chance for us to dive into the data and research and officially calculate what we all stand to gain if we take meaningful action to close these gaps. And the results were phenomenal. It really proves that housing stability lifts all ships.
I have an 8-year-old son, so a lot of my time is spent thinking about the intersection between education and housing. Finding Home revealed that if we cut our housing gap in half, that five local school districts would lift their State of Ohio Report Card Grade by at least one letter. Even if you don’t struggle with housing insecurity, if you child suddenly goes from studying in a C school district to a B district, that can change the trajectory of their lives.
It also found that many of our neighbors would be able to extend their life expectancy by more than five years. We know that unaffordable housing ages you, that skipping meals and cutting prescriptions has life-and-death consequences, but seeing this number in black and white is shocking.
Overall, Finding Home just drove home the idea that housing policy doesn’t live in a vacuum. The housing choices we make directly and significantly affect the jobs that we attract, our physical wellbeing, and how our children learn and grow. If you care about health, wealth, or education, you have to care about housing, too.
To learn more about the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio, visit www.ahaco.org.
About Meeting the Moment
Meeting the Moment is a newsletter that explores the dynamic changes in our region, what those mean for our community and those who call it home, and the importance of coming together to face the opportunities and challenges ahead. Don't miss a chance to stay informed. Subscribe to Meeting the Moment to receive updates on future articles from the series: https://cbusfdn.org/meetingthemoment.
